


born to make mistakes

by andibeth82



Series: darling, i'm a nightmare [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: Clint Barton & Matt Murdock Friendship, Deaf Clint Barton, Dumpster rooftop trashcan babies, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Slice of Life, True friends show up at each other's apartments in the middle of the night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 01:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3959911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt shakes his head, pressing his foot into the ground. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”</p><p>“Falling off of buildings, losing our senses, stumbling into people’s lives and not in the <i>You’ve Got Mail</i> rom-com kind of way?” Clint sighs. “Yeah. We kind of are.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	born to make mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to **gecko** for quick beta. And thank you to everyone who has read anything in this series so far. You all are awesome.

“We’re on a date.”

“Like, a Foggy and Murdock kind of date?”

“Oh, no.” Matt shakes his head. “No, those are exclusively reserved for Foggy, and they usually involve him making a fool of himself.” He grins. “This is just me wanting to hang out with my friend. The Barton and Murdock version, which means there’s drinking.”

“I’m flattered.” Clint reaches for the glass that the bartender’s put in front of him. “I didn’t think you cared enough to want to spend time with me, let alone drink with me.”

“Why, because I haven’t shown up in your dumpster in awhile?”

“Of all the dumpsters in New York, the one near my apartment is looking pretty lonely,” Clint replies nonchalantly. Matt reaches out with one hand and Clint steers it towards the other glass that’s been left on the counter.

“I think I gave Claire a heart attack the first time we met,” Matt admits. “She pulled me out of a dumpster and I was barely alive. Then I tried to leave even though I was a mess, and I think that pissed her off more. Wouldn’t tell her who I was, what happened…”

“But she stayed,” Clint finishes. Matt nods and Clint laughs.

“First time Nat and I met -- well, not really the first time. That’s a longer story. But she was bleeding out on the street after someone else got to her before I did. Not even SHIELD, just some other person she was running from who also wanted her dead, who happened to be on both of our tails. I had been watching her for awhile but the first time she really showed up in my life, it wasn’t, well…fun.”

“From what I know of Natasha, I’m surprised you’re alive,” Matt says sardonically and Clint smiles.

“Yeah, she trusted me after that. She kind of had to. I was supposed to take her home in a body bag and instead, I did a shitty job stitching up her stab wound.”

Matt shakes his head, pressing his foot into the ground. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”

“Falling off of buildings, losing our senses, stumbling into people’s lives and not in the _You’ve Got Mail_ rom-com kind of way?” Clint sighs. “Yeah. We kind of are.”

Matt shrugs and picks up his drink again. “To saving the world.”

“What?”

“To saving the world,” Matt repeats as he takes a sip of his beer. “That’s what we do, right?”

Clint thinks for a moment because it’s been awhile since he’s tried to categorize what he does, really, whether it’s worth it or not, whether it’s avenging or pretending or somewhere in between, and then he realizes that, yeah, the man might have a point.

“Fine. Sure. To saving the world.”

 

***

 

Matt’s standing invitation to Clint’s place (aside from barbecues) is rooted in episodes of _Dog Cops_ , so when Clint casually drops that there’s a marathon on Saturday, Matt shows up at ten in the morning outside Clint’s door holding a bag of chips and a six pack of Bud Light.

“You’re my favorite,” Clint says without bothering to hold back the happiness in his tone as he lets him in, opening the door wider so that Matt can use his walking stick more easily.

“I thought Natasha was your favorite,” Matt says as he limps by; Clint’s pretty sure that the ankle sprain from last week isn’t _quite_ healed enough to be walked on but he decides against saying something –- mostly because he knows it would earn him a rightful retort of why _he_ didn’t go to the hospital for his concussion.

“She is, but for different reasons,” Clint responds. “She doesn’t bring me beer.”

“She has sex with you,” Matt assesses and as Clint feels his cheeks heat up he finds himself thankful that Matt’s disability works in his favor when he decides to be snarky.

“Something like that.” He takes the beer from Matt’s hand and sticks it in the fridge. “So what’ll it be today? Pizza? Chinese?” He opens the drawer near the counter and shuffles through a few menus. “I think a new Thai place just opened around the corner, but damned if I know if it’s any good.”

“Chinese is fine.” Matt moves into the living room. “Haven’t had eggrolls in awhile. Where’s Kate?”

“Out and about.” Clint shrugs. “Sent her to pick up some new arrows but I’m sure she’s found something else that’s more exciting than that.”

“What could be more exciting than _Dog Cops_?” Matt stops. “Actually, wait. Don’t answer that. If there is something more exciting, I don’t want to know.”

“You’re an idiot,” Clint says, reaching for the cordless phone. “Keep making those comments and you’ll get _none_ of my eggrolls.”

“What a travesty.”

 

***

 

The thing is, when Matt and Clint drink, they actually _drink_. And Clint doesn’t consider himself someone who likes to get overly wasted, not in the way he liked to do when he was younger. But with Matt, it’s a comfortable relationship, and one where they can keep talking and keep opening up and eventually they’ve each drank three of the six bottles of beer in a two-hour period and Clint’s feeling more than a little loose.

“There were three of ‘em,” Matt says thickly, reaching for his shirt sleeve and rolling it back. Clint peers curiously at the spot that Matt gestures towards, noticing the deep cut.

“The hell you do that?” Clint asks. Matt snorts.

“Didn’t you hear me? Three of ‘em. Bigger. They have eyes.”

“So do you, dumbass. Better ones.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Yeah, lemme take out my hearing aids and we can play finger puppets or something while I try to figure out what the hell you’re saying,” Clint answers sarcastically. Despite the tone in his voice, Matt’s lips turn up slightly, and Clint can’t help but follow suit.

“You always gotta be so goddamn cynical?”

“Would it kill you to take a joke once in awhile? How does Bishop even deal with you?”

“Watch your tongue, Murdock. Next time, I’m really going to keep the eggrolls from you.”

 

***

 

Three weeks later, Clint’s woken up at two in the morning by a loud crash and a resounding yell.

He bolts out of bed as if he’s been electrocuted and freezes, clutching at the blanket, his heart pounding inside his chest as he tries to slow his breathing. His brain immediately snaps into survival mode as he tries to figure out the logic of who might be in his apartment so late. Kate was in LA and Natasha was on a mission, though that didn’t mean she couldn’t return home at any moment – but Natasha, he knows, would never make such a clumsy entrance. So, tracksuit thugs or the regular old house robbery, then.

He grabs the gun hidden in his bedside drawer and stuffs it in the waistband of his boxers, before moving slowly out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where most of the sound is coming from. Whoever’s breaking and entering isn’t being quiet, Clint will give them that much, which means they might be amateur enough to just run away.

Or, he realizes as he takes the gun out, leveling it into the space where there’s the most light, they could be Matt Murdock.

“Murdock, jesus!” He drops the gun onto the ground, reaching for the light switch and his annoyance and frustration are replaced almost immediately by worry when he sees the large spot of red on Matt’s leg. “What the fuck happened?”

“Tell you later, just patch me up,” Matt mutters, sinking onto the floor, and Clint catches him easily, propping him up.

“Easy, come on,” he says, helping him to the couch. “Stick your leg up there. Elevate that. I’ll get the bandages.”

“Been elevated since I walked up four damn flights of stairs,” Matt says, though his voice sounds strained. Clint chooses to ignore it, forcing himself not to be overly concerned. For as much blood as Matt’s probably lost, Clint knows he’s had much worse.

“I’m surprised you found the right apartment.” Clint puts the first aid kit next to Matt and Matt laughs.

“Walk-up. Remembered how many floors. Narrowed the rest of it down by other apartment sounds. Oh, and you’ve got that creaky step outside your door.”

Clint tugs off Matt’s shoe and rolls back the pants leg, exposing most of the lower half of his leg. “Hold still,” he says as he takes a large piece of gauze and shoves it hard against the wound, applying as much pressure as he can. Matt makes an unintelligible noise but otherwise remains immobile.

“Looks like someone got the best of you,” Clint offers a bit conversationally, watching the blood soak through. Matt laughs again but this time, the sound is bitter and forced.

“When you suck at your night job, it’s not really that much of a victory for the other guy.”

“Huh?” Clint pulls away, confused, meeting Matt’s face. He’s staring at him, though Clint knows he can’t really see anything, the blindfold over his eyes pulled up to his forehead. “What are you talking about, Murdock? I’ve seen you fight. Your technique.”

“Yeah, what about it?” Matt asks and Clint thinks there’s a hint of defensiveness nestled in his tone.

“Boxing, right?” Clint tries to keep his tone light as he swaps out the bandage and Matt’s quiet for a long time, so much so that if Clint wasn’t watching his face he might have thought the other man had passed out. The silence at least gives him something to focus on while he finishes cleaning out the wound.

“My dad was a boxer,” Matt says finally. “I learned everything about fighting from him. It’s worked for me.” He shrugs. “Well, so far. And besides, what’s that old saying? If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. I don’t need to be a better fighter if it does the job, you know? I just…I need to be enough.”

Clint turns the thought over in his mind and he thinks him and Matt could have conversations forever about the pressure of just having to be _enough_. “I learned from a carnie,” he trades, because he realizes that for all their conversations about their childhood, they’ve never really talked about their backgrounds in depth. “At the circus. My aim…yeah, I’m sure someone would yell at me for it, if I got trained. It’s not entirely correct. It’s probably pretty terrible, actually.” He looks down at his hands as he takes a large bandage from the kit, flexing his fingers automatically. “But it works.”

“It does,” Matt agrees. “And it’s yours. People might shoot better than you, that’s for sure. But they’re never going to take your skills away. Not the ones you learned for a specific reason.”

Clint nods. “Tony -– Stark -– he wanted to send me to some facility, once. To make me look better, I think, y’know, Avenger press type stuff. Thank god Nat talked him out of that, before I demolished half his suits with my arrows.”

“I had a mentor,” Matt admits with a slight grimace of pain. “A long time ago. I took it, but I didn’t want to, at first, for the same reasons. It cheapened…it didn’t feel right.”

There’s another bout of silence as Clint finishes securing the bandage on Matt’s leg, and finally, Matt speaks again.

“Sorry, in any case. For freaking you out. I know it’s late and I know you just got back from that other assignment, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Claire –”

“Would have questioned you,” Clint finishes, understanding the look in Matt’s eyes and even though he knows there’s nothing but darkness behind them he can see the change that signals his emotion. It was hard to hide, that kind of gratitude – to know what it means to have someone that can take care of you that you trusted enough. “You didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Matt looks down at his injury. “Thanks.”

“For you?” Clint smiles tiredly. “Anytime, bro. Just don’t ask me to ever do involuntary surgery or anything. I suck at cutting people open.”

“So I’ve heard,” Matt says, leaning back on the couch and Clint knows he doesn’t have to ask if Matt’s going to stay -- not that he’d planned on kicking his friend to the curb anyway. He grabs a spare blanket off of the armrest and tosses it forward.

“Hey.” Matt grins and Clint can see blood staining the bottom row of his teeth. “Next time we save the world together, yeah?”

Clint nods, reaching for the light switch on the wall. “Yeah,” he agrees, taking one last look at Matt before he turns away.

“We save the world. Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay fine, I stole the "patching each other up at 2:30am" thing from [this post](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com/post/118967076300/purple-fletchings-as-amusing-as-the-idea-of) but it's not like I wasn't ever going to write something like that for these two anyway.


End file.
